The present invention relates to a data broadcast receiver and a network system associated with a network such as Internet, etc.
In recent years, Internet has been widely known as a A world-wide network. The network of the Internet is formed so that each terminal is connected to another via, for example, a telephone line or a privately leased high speed data line and data is sent/received in the worldwide scale.
Such Internet is now used not only for sending/receiving business and personal electronic mail, but also for accessing home pages of many information suppliers via generally so-called Web sites to read various types of information. Such a Web site accessing is called net-surfing.
For such use of Internet, an easier accessing environment is now available for both business and personal users of computer hardware including personal computers and is rapidly coming into wide use.
To use Internet as mentioned above, the user must install a software program for accessing Web sites, which is generally called a browser, in the computer and read necessary information from Web sites using the browser.
When the user accesses a desired Web site supplied on Internet, for example, the user starts up a processing by the above browser software and makes displays for the accessing on the monitor screen. Then, the user inputs the address (URL: Uniform Resource Locator) of the desired home page on which the desired Web site is provided by using the keyboard to display the home page on the monitor screen. When the specified home page is accessed successfully, the accessed Web site home page image appears on the monitor screen. Then, the user can jump from the home page to search the Web site for desired information.
To access a desired Web site via Internet in such way, it is indispensable for the user to input the address, but the user must know the address of the Web site beforehand in this case. Thus, most of Internet users have to buy an information book containing much Web site information and many Web site. addresses or they must search for Web site information personally by any other means.
Since a Web site address is a combination of symbols, alphabets, numerals, and the like, it is usually inputted from a keyboard. However, since such an address comprises a few tens of digits, input operation of address is rather troublesome, often resulting in inputting wrong address. This prevents Internet users from easily accessing desired Web sites.
To avoid such trouble, a service has begun; at first the user inputs a key word as a retrieval item, then the user is supplied with the Web site address retrieved according to this key word. This service, however, is provided only in English language block now and will not be familiar to users in other language blocks.
Furthermore, browser software is provided with a function called xe2x80x9cbook markxe2x80x9d. For example, if a user who is accessing a Web site may read the same Web site again later and wants to store the address, the user can use this xe2x80x9cbook markxe2x80x9d function to register the Web site address data in the book mark list. Consequently, the user can omit the address entry from a keyboard next time and just call the address from the book mark list. Even in this case, however, when accessing a target Web site for the first time, the user must input the address from the keyboard. Thus, this method cannot omit the use of keyboard completely.
In other words, using of Internet is always accompanied by comparatively troublesome works such as getting of addresses, address entries, and the like.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a broadcast receiver and a method of accessing a computer network which assure that Internet users are able to enjoy net-surfing more easily by eliminating above-mentioned problems.
This object is accomplished by a broadcast receiver for receiving broadcast signals in which a data signal is transmitted together with a video signal, comprising: receiving means for receiving the broadcast signals; separating means for separating data signal from the broadcast signals received by the receiving means; judging means for judging whether the data signal separated by the separating means is information associated with a computer network or not; and storing means for storing the separated data signal when the separated data signal is judged to be information associated with the computer network.
According to the above configuration, address information can be selected from the received data signal transmitted together with the video signal so that the address information can be stored. Thus, address searching becomes unnecessary.
Furthermore, the object of the present invention is accomplished by a method of accessing a computer network comprising the steps of: receiving broadcast signals in which a data signal is transmitted together with a video signal; separating the data signal from the received broadcast signals; judging whether the separated data signal is information associated with the computer network or not; storing the separated data signal when the separated data signal is judged to be information associated with the computer network; and accessing the computer network according to the stored information associated with the computer network.
According to the above accessing method, an address list can be created using stored address information, so that an operation for inputting address using a keyboard can be omitted together with an associated advantage of eliminating address input errors.